


make your good love known

by maharieel



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: F/F, Fade to Black, Hurt/Comfort, baths, mild sexual themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 00:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18680599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: she returns, bloodied and bruised, and he greets her at the door.





	make your good love known

**Author's Note:**

> i almost got to the Sex™ but lost inspiration. have this half-baked thing instead.

She stumbles home well into the early morning, as usual, and the rivets of her armour are crimson-stained and heavy, as usual, and she is nothing but fragments and blood by the time she makes it to the loft. The door creaks open too-loud in the pre-dawn darkness. She hears John shift inside.

A candle flickers in the corner, illuminating him in bronze and leather, the scars on his chest shining bare in the dim light. Annika sighs at the sight of him and fights the urge to collapse against the dresser by the door.

He must catch the look in her eye, though, and the faintness to her step. “Hey,” he mutters, standing too quickly to possibly hide his desperation.

Everything aches inside her, a thundering pulse beneath her armour that she’s far too accustom to these days. She wants it gone, wants the fighting to cease and the blood seeping from the cracks of herself to slow and for the world to stop bursting into flames seconds after she douses it. It freezes somewhere deep in her gut, the fury and pain and heavy-set exhaustion, and she clenches her jaw around the feeling. _Not here_. _Not in our home_. She makes herself breathe as John pads across the room.

He makes it to her too quickly, a calloused hand reaching to steady her where she fumbles for solid ground. The warmth of his hand alone almost penetrates through the plate, and she lets herself lean into him. She imagines herself fizzling out, skin peeled away to reveal a better version of herself underneath. _If only_.

“What happened?” he asks, even as she feels his fingers tugging at buckles and straps. An armpiece peels away crimson, and she revels in the rush of air against her broken skin.

“Dreven’s dead,” she says, and she feels the way his hands twitch against her now-bare arm. “Shandris was right. Whatever the Horde were planning, Dreven and his San’layn were involved.”

The other armpiece shifts off her skin, and she makes herself flex her fingers around the freedom. His knuckles rub against the roughly-healed wounds enough to make her groan softly. “Bit of a shitshow, I take it?”

Annika just huffs against him, face twisting.

“Right. Figures.”

Through his well-worn experience and her pliant limbs, they manage to get her stripped down until there’s nothing between them but skin. The blood seems almost worse, with her bare and illuminated like this, although at least the wounds are all sealed. Small mercies. She stretches lightly, freshly-healed skin twisting and threatening to tear, but it holds despite the drying blood that cakes her. When she opens her eyes, she finds John brushing his fingers against the nasty purple-black mess that’s her right shoulder. She’d almost forgotten.

“Blightcaller was there,” she mutters, grimacing at the wound. “Bastard got away, too.”

John runs his fingers across the puckered flesh one more time, before shifting his hand up to grip her shoulder more steadily. “If that sonofabitch isn’t dead by the time this war ends, so help me.”

“You and me both,” Annika says, the faintest tug of a smile on the corner of her lips. He catches her gaze and returns the gesture, beard shifting in the candlelight. She wants to kiss him, wants to feel his warmth all over her, but the stench of dried blood still hangs thick in the air. She bites back on her tongue and sighs down at herself instead. His eyes follow hers, and his hand moves to push her deeper into the room.

“Come on,” he says, guiding her. She lets him push her through the loft and into the washroom. A wave of steam hits her instantly, the bath already full and glowing a faint orange from the heating runes along the rim. She lets herself hum against his hands.

“Thank you.”

John just grunts, urging her to get in. “I thought you’d want one.”

The heat of the water hits her feet, and her calves, and her waist, and she’s engulfed in steam and fumes and _burning_ , hot enough to reach her core. Annika lets the tension in her muscles and fists loosen, lets herself lean her head back against the rim of the tub and breathe. Her anger fizzles and dies, lost in the heat, and she revels in the feeling. Her thinly-veiled skin still coated in blood aches, the water pooling a faded crimson on the surface. The wound at her shoulder in particular _burns_ , blackened skin twisting, but the feeling soon numbs to a distant throb as she rubs her fingers into it.

“Thank you,” she sighs again, eyes shut against the warmth.

One of John’s calloused hands finds its way to her scalp, his fingers somehow burning despite the heat of the bath, and starts running through her hair. “You needed it.”

She cracks an eye open enough to glare at him but there’s a softness to his face that she relishes in instead.

The next few minutes drift by easily, her hands scrubbing at the blood on her skin and his at the grime in her hair, and at one point John disappears to change the water. It’s more of a comfort than she thinks she deserves, his hands being so gentle where they tug at her scalp or lather her with soap. She doesn’t miss the way his eyes keep flickering to her shoulder, though. Dreven had been enough of a threat in himself, having caused them so much trouble in the past, but she knew the arrow wound above her breast hurts John more than anything that blasted San’layn could have done. That, and the waiting. He’d never been good at waiting.

Annika catches him glaring at it again, and sighs. “John.”

He clenches his fingers around the bar of soap in his hand. The remnants of her blood still linger in the suds on his skin. “What?”

“I’m fine.”

His eyes shift over her hair and her shoulder and the rest of her now scrubbed raw, before settling back on her face. There’s a heaviness to his gaze that she doesn’t quite know how to shake. She’s not sure she wants to.

“You’re sure?” he asks, voice a rasp.

“Why don’t you check if you’re so worried.”

A muscle jumps in his throat. Proud of herself, Annika’s halfway to a smile when he’s suddenly moving, body shifting to lean over the tub as his lips crash into hers. Her laugh is swallowed in his mouth, his lips pressed so tightly against hers there’s barely room to breathe. She feels more than hears the growl he lets out in return, the sound reverberating down her throat and into her core. A wave of water splashes over the side of the tub as she shifts beneath where John’s propping himself up above her, his arms tensed where they grip the porcelain rim.

“Happy?” she gasps when he finally pulls back.

John shifts his mouth down her jaw and throat, tongue sucking at the first scar he finds, and Annika can feel the smile on his lips. He shifts his position to free one of his arms, and before she can process it his hand finds one of her breasts beneath the water. He tugs almost hard enough to hurt, and she moans into his shoulder.

“John,” she says, thighs tensed.

His hand shifts to rest palm-flat against the wound above her breast, skin close-to-searing from the heat of the water. A moment later he lifts his head from her neck to look at her, an eyebrow raised. “Not enjoying yourself?”

She sighs out a laugh, shifting up in the water to run her hands along his chest. “If you keep me trapped in this bath tub I won’t be.”

He shakes his head, chest rumbling beneath her hand, but does slowly shift back to kneel beside the tub again. Annika twists to follow him, legs and arms protesting against leaving the heat of the water, but John beats her to it. Slipping his arms under her knees and behind her shoulders, he hoists her effortlessly from the tub in one swift motion. Water rushes from her, splashing unceremoniously over the side of the tub to soak the rug below it. She can feel his heart where it pounds out of time against her shoulder, and she relishes in the sound as he carries her back to the bedroom.

She knows her skin burns where he clutches her, knows the blood has given way to the smooth ichor-thick feel of hot water and soap, and yet he holds her against his chest with enough care not to tug at her still-aching wounds. In his arms, with his beard tickling at her jaw and the scratch of his chest air against her side, Annika can almost forget there’s a war ready to greet her at sunrise. 


End file.
